Seeking to improve understanding, communication, and cooperation between Mexico and the United States by promoting original research, encouraging public discussion, and proposing policy options for enhancing the bilateral relationship.

Murder in Mexico: The great mystery

EVEN the official story is shocking. In September 2014 a group of student teachers from Ayotzinapa, in the south-western state of Guerrero, decided to commandeer some buses in the nearby town of Iguala. They wanted to go to a rally in Mexico City, and it is common for students in this part of Mexico to take buses for such things. They usually return them.

Forty-three of those students disappeared, and are presumed dead. The mayor of Iguala and his wife were angry with them for having disrupted a political event, the federal government says, and ordered the local police to hand them over to a drug gang, the Guerreros Unidos. The gangsters mistook the students for members of a rival gang. They killed them, burned their bodies at a rubbish dump and tossed the remains in a river.